Code switching is an established technique that facilitates a universal set of FT quantum gate operations by combining two QEC codes with complementary sets of gates, which each by themselves are easy to implement fault-tolerantly. In this work, we present a code switching scheme that respects the constraints of FT circuit design by only making use of transversal gates. These gates are intrinsically FT without additional qubit overhead. We analyze application of the scheme to low-distance color codes, which are suitable for operation in existing quantum processors, for instance based on trapped ions or neutral atoms. We briefly discuss connectivity constraints that arise for architectures based on superconducting qubits. Numerical simulations of circuit-level noise indicate that a logical T -gate, facilitated by our scheme, could outperform both flag-FT magic state injection protocols and a physical T -gate at low physical error rates. Transversal code switching naturally scales to code pairs of arbitrary code distance. We observe improved performance of a distance-5 protocol compared to both the distance-3 implementation and the physical gate for realistically attainable physical entangling gate error rates. We discuss how the scheme can be implemented with a large degree of parallelization, provided that logical auxiliary qubits can be prepared reliably enough. Our logical T -gate circumvents potentially costly magic state factories. The requirements to perform QEC and to achieve an FT universal gate set are then essentially the same: Prepare logical auxiliary qubits offline, execute transversal gates and perform fast-enough measurements. Transversal code switching thus serves to enable more practical hardware realizations of FT universal quantum computation. The scheme alleviates resource requirements for experimental demonstrations of quantum algorithms run on logical qubits.
Code switching is an established technique that facilitates a universal set of FT quantum gate operations by combining two QEC codes with complementary sets of gates, which each by themselves are easy to implement fault-tolerantly. In this work, we present a code switching scheme that respects the constraints of FT circuit design by only making use of transversal gates. These gates are intrinsically FT without additional qubit overhead. We analyze application of the scheme to low-distance color codes, which are suitable for operation in existing quantum processors, for instance based on trapped ions or neutral atoms. We briefly discuss connectivity constraints that arise for architectures based on superconducting qubits. Numerical simulations of circuit-level noise indicate that a logical T -gate, facilitated by our scheme, could outperform both flag-FT magic state injection protocols and a physical T -gate at low physical error rates. Transversal code switching naturally scales to code pairs of arbitrary code distance. We observe improved performance of a distance-5 protocol compared to both the distance-3 implementation and the physical gate for realistically attainable physical entangling gate error rates. We discuss how the scheme can be implemented with a large degree of parallelization, provided that logical auxiliary qubits can be prepared reliably enough. Our logical T -gate circumvents potentially costly magic state factories. The requirements to perform QEC and to achieve an FT universal gate set are then essentially the same: Prepare logical auxiliary qubits offline, execute transversal gates and perform fast-enough measurements. Transversal code switching thus serves to enable more practical hardware realizations of FT universal quantum computation. The scheme alleviates resource requirements for experimental demonstrations of quantum algorithms run on logical qubits.
Topological color codes are widely acknowledged as promising candidates for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Neither a two-dimensional nor a three-dimensional topology, however, can provide a universal gate set {H, T, CNOT}, with the T-gate missing in the two-dimensional and the H-gate in the three-dimensional case. These complementary shortcomings of the isolated topologies may be overcome in a combined approach, by switching between a two- and a three-dimensional code while maintaining the logical state. In this work, we construct resource-optimized deterministic and non-deterministic code switching protocols for two- and three-dimensional distance-three color codes using fault-tolerant quantum circuits based on flag-qubits. Deterministic protocols allow for the fault-tolerant implementation of logical gates on an encoded quantum state, while non-deterministic protocols may be used for the fault-tolerant preparation of magic states. Taking the error rates of state-of-the-art trapped-ion quantum processors as a reference, we find a logical failure probability of 3% for deterministic logical gates, which cannot be realized transversally in the respective code. By replacing the three-dimensional distance-three color code in the protocol for magic state preparation with the morphed code introduced in [1], we reduce the logical failure rates by two orders of magnitude, thus rendering it a viable method for magic state preparation on near-term quantum processors. Our results demonstrate that code switching enables the fault-tolerant and deterministic implementation of a universal gate set under realistic conditions, and thereby provide a practical avenue to advance universal, fault-tolerant quantum computing and enable quantum algorithms on first, error-corrected logical qubits.
A technique for realizing a universal set of fault-tolerant quantum operations is the code switching method, which leverages two quantum codes with complementary sets of transversal gates. To date, the application of this technique has been largely limited to families of color codes supporting a logical T gate. No analogous code switching protocols exist for many other prominent families, such as rotated surface codes, or for finer Z-rotation gates. In this work, we first utilize the doubling technique as a unified framework to construct a class of quantum color codes encoding a single logical qubit with an arbitrarily large minimum distance, enabling the transversal realization of arbitrary small logical Z-rotation gates. We investigate the structural properties of this code family, demonstrating that they improve upon the parameters of state-of-the-art triorthogonal codes, achieve lower qubit overhead compared to certain known color codes, and admit single-shot decoding of Z-syndromes via meta-checks. Furthermore, we show that this framework extends beyond color codes; specifically, it enables the generation of r-orthogonal quantum codes, r≥2, that inherit the local geometry of rotated surface codes. We then provide an overhead optimization protocol alongside several candidate codes tailored for realizing logical Z-rotation gates within rotated surface codes. Finally, we extend the fault-tolerant code switching protocol based on transversal CNOT gates to incorporate fault-tolerant realization of Z-rotation gates at any level of the Clifford hierarchy for geometries compatible with rotated surface codes. We present the first demonstration of fault-tolerant magic state preparation by means of code switching within a distance-three rotated surface code using a total footprint of only 45 physical qubits, and evaluate its performance through a simulation.
Quantum error correction is a crucial tool for mitigating hardware errors in quantum computers by encoding logical information into multiple physical qubits. However, no single error-correcting code allows for an intrinsically fault-tolerant implementation of all the gates needed for universal quantum computing [1-3]. One way to tackle this problem is to switch between two suitable error-correcting codes, while preserving the encoded logical information, which in combination give access to a fault-tolerant universal gate set [4-6]. In this work, we present the first experimental implementation of fault-tolerant code switching between two codes. One is the seven-qubit color code [7], which features fault-tolerant CNOT and H quantum gates, while the other one, the 10-qubit code [8], allows for a fault-tolerant T-gate implementation. Together they form a complementary universal gate set. Building on essential code switching building blocks, we construct logical circuits and prepare 12 different logical states which are not accessible natively in a fault-tolerant way within a single code. Finally, we use code switching to entangle two logical qubits employing the full universal gate set in a single logical quantum circuit. Our results experimentally open up a new route towards deterministic control over logical qubits with low auxiliary qubit overhead, not relying on the probabilistic preparation of resource states.
Code-switching offers a route to universal, fault-tolerant quantum computation by circumventing the limitation implied by the Eastin-Knill theorem against a universal transversal gate set within a single quantum code. Here, we present a fault-tolerant code-switching protocol between two versions of the [[8,3,2]] code. One version supports weakly fault-tolerant single-qubit Clifford gates, while the other supports a logical CCZ gate via transversal T/T† together with logical CZ, CNOT, and SWAP gates. Because both codes have distance 2, the protocol operates in a postselected, error-detecting regime: single faults lead to detectable outcomes, and accepted runs exhibit quadratic suppression of logical error rates. This yields a universal scheme for postselected fault-tolerant computation. We validate the protocol numerically through simulations of state preparation, code switching, and a three-logical-qubit implementation of Grover's search.
Topological color codes are widely acknowledged as promising candidates for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Neither a two-dimensional nor a three-dimensional topology, however, can provide a universal gate set {, , }, with the gate missing in the two-dimensional and the gate in the three-dimensional case. These complementary shortcomings of the isolated topologies may be overcome in a combined approach, by switching between a two- and a three-dimensional code while maintaining the logical state. In this work, we construct resource-optimized deterministic and nondeterministic code-switching protocols for two- and three-dimensional distance-three color codes using fault-tolerant quantum circuits based on flag qubits. Deterministic protocols allow for the fault-tolerant implementation of logical gates on an encoded quantum state, while nondeterministic protocols may be used for the fault-tolerant preparation of magic states. Taking the error rates of state-of-the-art trapped-ion quantum processors as a reference, we find a logical failure probability of 3% for deterministic logical gates, which cannot be realized transversally in the respective code. By replacing the three-dimensional distance-three color code in the protocol for magic state preparation with the morphed code introduced in Vasmer and Kubica [PRX Quantum 3, 030319 (2022)], we reduce the logical failure rates by 2 orders of magnitude, thus rendering it a viable method for magic state preparation on near-term quantum processors. Our results demonstrate that code switching enables the fault-tolerant and deterministic implementation of a universal gate set under realistic conditions, and thereby provide a practical avenue to advance universal, fault-tolerant quantum computing and enable quantum algorithms on first, error-corrected logical qubits. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We compare two different implementations of fault-tolerant entangling gates on logical qubits. In one instance, a twelve-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer is used to implement a non-transversal logical CNOT gate between two five qubit codes. The operation is evaluated with varying degrees of fault tolerance, which are provided by including quantum error correction circuit primitives known as flagging and pieceable fault tolerance. In the second instance, a twenty-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer is used to implement a transversal logical CNOT gate on two [[7,1,3]] color codes. The two codes were implemented on different but similar devices, and in both instances, all of the quantum error correction primitives, including the determination of corrections via decoding, are implemented during runtime using a classical compute environment that is tightly integrated with the quantum processor. For different combinations of the primitives, logical state fidelity measurements are made after applying the gate to different input states, providing bounds on the process fidelity. We find the highest fidelity operations with the color code, with the fault-tolerant SPAM operation achieving fidelities of 0.99939(15) and 0.99959(13) when preparing eigenstates of the logical X and Z operators, which is higher than the average physical qubit SPAM fidelities of 0.9968(2) and 0.9970(1) for the physical X and Z bases, respectively. When combined with a logical transversal CNOT gate, we find the color code to perform the sequence--state preparation, CNOT, measure out--with an average fidelity bounded by [0.9957,0.9963]. The logical fidelity bounds are higher than the analogous physical-level fidelity bounds, which we find to be [0.9850,0.9903], reflecting multiple physical noise sources such as SPAM errors for two qubits, several single-qubit gates, a two-qubit gate and some amount of memory error.